


my heart

by ahtohallan_calling



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kristanna Smut Week 2020 (Disney), because....why not, this is a dragon age au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22698484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahtohallan_calling/pseuds/ahtohallan_calling
Summary: This is the way it is with them; he takes blows meant for her; she patches him up after and calls him vhenan, and neither of them dares to ask the other what they mean by it. He was her first partner when she left her clan and joined the Wardens seven years ago, and she has never had another– never will have another, now that they both have heard the calling start to sing in the back of their minds and know that this expedition will be their last. She can never decide if it is more like poetry or a sick joke that after working so hard to keep each other alive now they will watch each other die.(you don’t need to have played DA to know what’s going on!)
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	my heart

**Author's Note:**

> okay i think i explained everything well enough in the fic for people who haven’t played the game, but basically kristoff and anna are grey wardens, aka part of an order/army whose job is to protect everyone else from darkspawn which are basically like. monsters? and anyway part of becoming a grey warden is doing this ritual where u drink darkspawn blood (ew) and you can sense them but then over time the evil shit gets stronger in you and you feel them calling to you so before you go crazy and hurt people you go die fighting them in the deep roads
> 
> for people who have played the game, in this au anna is a dalish elf, kristoff is a human from the anderfels, and this is set during da:i when all the wardens hear the calling at the same time

It’s easier to ignore the singing in her blood when he looks at her that way.

“You alright?” he asks gruffly, and she shakes her head, not taking her eyes off his. “Where?” is his next question, and already he’s moving to look her over without even pausing to swipe at the blood sliding down his cheek.

“My ankle,” she says, and when he comes over she takes the chance to lean up on her toes and wipe at it herself with her sleeve to make sure the gash it pours from isn’t too deep. 

She trembles with the effort of supporting herself on her screaming ankle; she can already feel it swelling and pressing against the confines of her boot. It is just a sprain; she has had worse, but tonight he will fret over it, dress and wrap it himself and ask her a thousand times if it pains her still, if there is something more he can do.

 _You have done enough_ , she will tell him; he was only hurt in the first place because he shoved her aside to block a blow that had bounced off the top of his shield and landed beneath his eye. And though it saved her, and then she saved him in return by cutting down the monster from behind before nocking an arrow to kill its last fellow before it could howl for aid– still he will blame himself for it, worry over it even more than usual, and all the while she will love him so ardently she wonders if beyond the Veil it will still be a part of her. And yet she will say nothing, and neither will he.

This is the way it is with them; he takes blows meant for her; she patches him up after and calls him _vhenan_ , and neither of them dares to ask the other what they mean by it. He was her first partner when she left her clan and joined the Wardens seven years ago, and she has never had another– never will have another, now that they both have heard the Calling start to sing in the back of their minds and know that this expedition will be their last. She can never decide if it is more like poetry or a sick joke that after working so hard to keep each other alive now they will watch each other die.

It is a part of the vow she took years ago, that when she hears the music of the dark places calling to her she will go to them, will meet her end there and take as many darkspawn down with her as she can. The fact that Kristoff will die there with her is both a comfort and an agonizing pain.

She is selfish, though; she is smaller, weaker in close combat like what they will find in the place under the earth where the monsters are born, and so she knows she will fall first and is grateful for it. He knows it, too; sometimes at night she wakes to the sound of him tossing and turning and muttering her name, increasingly panicked until she creeps over to his bedroll and wakes him with a cool hand pressed to his cheek, as it is now, lingering though she has wiped it clean and now the blood merely oozes from the wound.

“Lean on me as we walk,” he says, already setting a hand on her lower back. “I do not know how long it will be until we find a shelter. I don’t want you to make it worse.”

They both know they will need to rest for more than a night this time; it was a hard battle after a grueling week, and so sleeping under the stars will not do, especially when it looks like rain and when she can tell he is hiding the rest of his injuries from her. She shakes her head. “No. I saw you take that blow to the ribs. I don’t want _you_ to make it worse.”

It is the oldest argument between them; they would both rather go without than take from the other. She would rather die now than lean on him when he is hurting.

(She wouldn’t, not really, not when the end is already so close, and she still hasn’t told him what _vhenan_ means. Then again, he doesn’t ask, and she is beginning to think he has known all along.)

They find a compromise; he strips off his breastplate with her help so that the cold metal doesn’t knock against his injuries, and she carries it on her back with her pack. Then and only then does she lean against his less-injured side, and they hobble together through the fields in the fading light.

By some miracle, they crest a hill, and she sights a lone structure just at the edge of the forest. Her stomach lurches at the sight; they are here on another patrol and due to return to the keep next month, but if the Calling keeps growing louder, there is an entrance to the Deep Roads just on the other side of the wood; this could be the last time they stand together like this, out in the open with the sunset painting his hair golden–

“Anna,” he says softly, bringing her back from the precipice. Somehow he always knows when it is about to be too much for her, just as she knows that her touch is the only thing that will chase away his nightmares. 

Once when she was young and thought she knew better, she heard a story about soulmates and laughed. Now she sees the way his eyes soften when they meet hers, feels his hand squeeze her shoulder, and she could weep for love of him, vaster than anything else she has ever known and still not enough to halt the inevitable.

They draw closer to the building; to her surprise, judging by the stained glass and the statue of a woman reaching for the heavens, it’s a chantry, but the doors are hanging off the hinges, and a tree has fallen against it and never been moved, leaving a small hole in the roof.

“I thought you humans loved your chantries,” she says, genuinely curious.

He is frowning above her. “We do. I do not know how this one came to be abandoned.”

There are so many ways, none of them pleasant, and her mind lingers on them until they are inside, the only sound the clinking of the armor and the tapping of their boots on the stone. Dust motes rise up and swirl around them in the last streams of sunlight, but their eyes are drawn to the statue at the front, the bride of the Maker with her palms cupped before her, hoping to catch a modicum of mercy. Anna keeps to the gods of her people, and Kristoff keeps to none, but still both of them stand silent for a moment of reverence.

It is so quiet she can hear him when he swallows hard. He looks down at her, deep brown eyes as solemn as if he were still looking at the statue. “I try to pray sometimes. To Andraste, to the Maker, even to the gods of your people, but I…I cannot bring myself to do it.”

“Why not?”

There is something new in his expression, something that is making her chest ache. “There is only one thing I have ever been able to put my faith in, _vhenan_.”

The shock of her word on his lips nearly knocks the wind from her. “You do not know what that word means.”

“Then tell me.”

She has called him that for six years, and this is the first time he has ever asked, and she longs to tell him and see him smile, but greater than that is the fear that somehow he still does not know, that she has imagined all that lies between them, and so instead she breaks his gaze and says, “You need to sit down. Let me look at your injuries.”

“You’re the one with a sprained ankle. You need to sit more than I do.”

“Then sit with me,” she huffs out, and he gives her that easy grin that he keeps only for her.

They sit together on the set of stairs that lead to the sanctuary; she peels off her boots with a sigh of relief, freeing her swollen ankle from the confines of leather. She glances over at him and sees he is gritting his teeth, and so she guides him to lean back against the altar, taking some of the weight off his injured torso. “Let me see,” she asks, and though this is hardly the first time she has seen his bare chest they both blush as she helps him remove his shirt. 

Ugly purple and black bruises stain the left side of his chest, spreading from his ribs. She cannot help but wince at the sight. “You’ve got to stop taking hits for me,” she chastises him.

“You would have died.”

“Perhaps not. And besides, you could have died, too.”

He closes his eyes. “What does it matter? Our time is coming to a close anyway, _vhenan_.”

It takes her breath away again, the sound of that word in his mouth. It frightens her that suddenly he is so intent on saying it, on finding out why she always has. “Stop saying that. You don’t know what it means.”

“You call me it every day.”

“Yes.”

“So why can I not say it back?”  
“Because– because you do not know what it means–”

“Then tell me.”

Her hand settles on his chest, and she feels him stiffen beneath her touch, but he does not pull away. Her magic is paltry compared to her sisters, but it’s enough that when she traces her fingertips down around the blue edges of bruising, she can ease some of the pain. He lets out a sigh of relief, then frowns, opening his eyes again to look at her. “You cannot distract me from this. I will know. _Tell me_.”

“I am,” she whispers, “Kristoff, I am.”

Somehow she has drawn so close to him as she works that her nose is brushing against his cheek; he realizes it at the same time and sucks in a breath, his stomach flattening against her palm. If he turns just a little–

“I thought today I might see you cut down before me,” he says, his voice strained. “And I know soon enough I will, and I– I have spent every night these past years telling myself ‘tomorrow, tomorrow you will tell her, tomorrow you will find the courage’, and now–”

He does turn then, and when their lips meet all the rest of it falls away. There is only the warmth of his skin beneath her hand, the way his sighs brush up against her own, and he is all life and breath and if only they can keep kissing it will stay that way forever.

A crack of thunder sounds then, and they both startle enough to stop, but they do not pull away. He rests her forehead against hers, his eyes still closed and his swollen lips turning up into a smile.

“My heart,” she says, her voice barely audible above the pattering of the rain. “ _Vhenan_.”

“We are fools, the both of us,” he says hoarsely. “Seven years, and only now–”

“I know.”

He kisses her again, though this time not so gently. His tongue slips past her lips, brushes against her own, and she opens herself to him with a sigh, pressing as close as she can without fear of hurting him.

“Your armor,” he murmurs against her lips, and she cannot help but laugh.  
“I forgot I was wearing it. Here, I–”

She leans back and pulls off her shoulder guards, the leather breastplate and iron greaves, and tosses them aside; they land with a clang against a pew, and she blushes, knowing her enthusiasm will amuse him. But when she turns and meets his gaze, there is no trace of laughter in his eyes; instead there is only a dark heat, a hunger that sends a spark through her.

“Will you help with mine?” he asks, his voice low, and the spark coils and turns to flame.

She does so, removing the much heavier steel and setting it aside with care; when she pulls off his boots, he sighs with relief. Now he is nearly bare before her, wearing only a pair of homespun trousers that rarely see the light of day and currently leave little to the imagination.

Her mouth is dry when she moves within kissing distance again; she cannot help but set her trembling hands on his shoulders, tracing over the hard lines of muscle, as she moves to sit astride his lap. His arms circle around her waist, keeping her close, and he presses a kiss to the pulse point beneath her jaw.

Her head falls back, braids slipping over her shoulders, and he takes advantage of it to bring his mouth lower, tracing a burning line down her neck and over her collarbones before settling his forehead against her shoulder, his nose brushing against the hollow of her throat. She brings her hand up to card through his hair, her fingers stroking slowly through the blond strands.

“ _Vhenan_ ,” she whispers, and he shivers beneath her. “ _Ar lath ma._ ”

“I love you, too.”

“I was worried– so worried– that I would never find the time to tell you, that when we went–”

“But you did,” he said, his voice rough. “You told me, and I told you, and now– now we have a little time, at least, to do with as we wish.”

His fingers curl in the back of her shirt as he speaks, and suddenly it almost pains her that she is still in it. “What do you wish for, then?”

He lifts his head to meet her gaze, his eyes darker than she has ever seen them. “You. All that you are willing to give.”

“What will you give me in return?” she asks, shocking herself with the boldness of her words.

He presses a kiss to one of her cheekbones, just where the edges of the dark _vallaslin_ tattooed there entwine with her freckles. “Everything.”

“Then you can have it all. It was yours to begin with,” she says, leaning back just long enough to pull off her shirt before crushing her lips against his once more.

He reacts immediately, hips rocking up beneath her as he clutches her to his chest, so close she cannot tell where her heartbeat ends and his begins. She lets out a little gasp and tightens her grip on his shoulders, wondering at how quickly the embers she has carried so long have burst into a roaring flame, and then his teeth scrape over a sensitive spot on her collarbone and she cries out his name, “Kristoff,” her own sort of hymn echoing off the walls of this sacred place.

His breathing is ragged against her skin. “Anna, my heart, I– I wish this were somewhere beautiful, somewhere besides a stone floor where you could look up and see the stars–”

“Just you. That’s enough.”

He groans. “Seven years– I can’t believe we’ve waited this long–”

She huffed out an exasperated sigh. “Then stop making me wait even longer.”

He doesn’t after that; it’s fast and needy and awkward more than once, in no small part because neither of them bothered to fully remove their pants, but when he shudders against her, panting her name, she lets out a sigh of contentment and lets herself sag back against the stone floor. 

“Worth the wait, I think,” she says, reaching up to trail her fingers down his jaw. 

He catches her hand and kisses each fingertip in turn, sending a new jolt of yearning to break through the haze of her afterglow. “I should have said something years ago.”

“So should I.”

He moves to lay beside her, his fingers blindly finding hers and tangling with them. She closes her eyes; trying to ignore the whisper of the Calling that is somehow louder now that she has at last found something that blocks it out. “At least we still have now,” he says, his voice barely audible, and she squeezes his hand, knowing that if she dares to speak aloud he will realize that beside him, she is weeping.


End file.
